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Abstract
Hundreds of thousands of off springs have been born as a result of AI with sexed sperm. Although this technology has been used
for many species, the overwhelming majority of pregnancies have been in cattle, nearly all as a result of sperm that were sexed and
subsequently frozen. The technology for sexing sperm has not changed greatly in the past 7 years, but refinements have speeded up
the process and reduced damage to sperm.
The process of commercialization of sexed sperm has accelerated recently. However, this technology is characterized by high
costs, complexity of implementation and lower pregnancy rates than with control sperm. Nevertheless, sexed, frozen bovine sperm
are being produced commercially in many countries, although from a limited number of bulls.
The main application of sexed sperm to date has been to breed dairy heifers to produce female calves. Because of the slow speed
of sexing sperm, fewer sperm are used per insemination dose of sexed than conventional sperm, and pregnancy rates with this
product are often only slightly decreased. Successful use of sexed sperm requires excellent management of cattle, careful handling
of sperm and use of skilled inseminators. As costs decline, sexed sperm will be used increasingly for cattle breeding, horse breeding
and niche applications in other species.
# 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Sperm; Sexing; Bovine; Flow cytometer
1. Introduction
There has been great interest in sexing sperm ever
since AI was practiced widely. More than a dozen
approaches to sexing sperm have been attempted, but
convincing results were not produced prior to 1980. The
major breakthrough was development of flow cytometry/cell sorting in the early 1980s [1]; the initial methods
separated X- and Y-sperm effectively, but killed the
sperm, making the procedure impractical. A major
refinement to this procedure was making the system
work without killing or severely damaging the sperm
[2].
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445
Table 1
Normality of calves from sexed sperm (least squares means)
Numbers
Abortion rate (%)
Gestation length (d)
Neonatal death (%)
Calving ease score
Birth weight (kg)
Live at weaning (%)
Weaning weight (kg)
Sexed a
Control
1158
4.5
279
3.5
1.22
33.9
91.7
239
787
5.0
279
4.0
1.23
34.1
91.5
241
446